Give service in Trivandrum, not outside, say distis

BENGALURU, INDIA: When partners in Trivandrum complained that there was a long turnaround time in getting service, distributors blamed it on the practice of sending the defective products to Bengaluru or Cochin for repair and replacement. Needless to say, partners therefore asked for the service issues to be resolved within the city limits to make the process faster.

Post-sales service support, a sore point with most dealers, was one of the issues that partners in Trivandrum also raised at The DQ Week IT Panchayat held in the city on March 12, 2009. The event saw the participation of representatives from the leading distribution houses— Ingram Micro India, Redington India, Rashi Peripherals and Neoteric Infomatique—as well as a room full of channel partners. The channel community was represented on the dias by Prasad Oommen, President, All Kerala IT Dealers Association (AKITDA) and the event was moderated by Vinita Bhatia, Executive Editor, DQ Channels.

Voicing his displeasure about sub-standard service support was Sunil of Cox Infosystems, who said, “We do not get good post-sales support from distributors for most products, like motherboards, RAMs, hard disk drives, etc.”

However, Rajesh Radhakrishnan of Redington India stated that service was mostly delivered by vendors directly and most vendors had a policy which had to be followed by the dealer and the end customer.

“We need to get support from vendors on this behalf and while I accept that there are issues with the post-sales service offered, there is not much we can do about it, because it falls outside our domain,” said Biju Joseph of Ingram Micro India.

But Binoy Pazhoor of Pazhoor Group of Companies insisted that distributors should ensure that the service should be provided locally, rather than in cities outside Trivandrum. “My customer wants the product repaired or replaced instantaneously. So how do I explain to him that his product has been sent for service elsewhere and that he needs to wait for it to be returned?” he questioned.

Shenil Varghese of Neoteric Infomatique noted that the dealers too could help minimize these incidents if they tried to resolve the problem at the first level, themselves.

“If they check it for basic problems themselves, in most cases they can do the trouble shooting or at least intimate us and the service center about the problem, then it will cut down the time in getting the product repaired and replaced, and minimize at least 25 percent of the problems,” he suggested.

When a show of hands call on whether partners would be able to identify and isolate these technical problems, revealed that most did not have the technical know-how to do so. This shows that there is a pertinent need for vendors and distributors to organize workshops and seminars where they could educate partners on offering the first-level of support to the end customers.

“If there are certain specifications that I need, then I do not get the details quickly from the local distributor representatives. If this is readily available then it becomes easier for us to close deals with customers,” Oommen noted.

Shenil Varghese however said the reason for this delay was because distributors had to get in touch with the vendors about the price they could extend to the partner.

Yet another case that was debated was the delay in getting backend incentives.

The event saw presentations by Symantec and Emerson Network Power, where several of the present 45 partners were seen taking notes about the solutions available with these two vendors.